Our Local Web Audience is International
Internationalisation on the web is a critical part of a successful business strategy. Even within our own small cities there are now greater cultural mixes than ever before with Chinese now officially the second most widely spoken language in Australia. About 4.8 million people in Australia (out of a population counting less than 21 million) were born overseas. So why is it so many businesses are dropping the ball with their Anglo-Saxon stereotyping of website users?
A New BusinessWeek Logo
BusinessWeek this week dropped the blue stripe from the base of their logo because red, white and blue gains negative feedback internationally – too patriotic and too American. A lot of the world aren’t enamoured by the current administration and foreign / trade policy. Does that make sense why a large business might have gone to these lengths to distance themselves from serving one country?
Confused Signals from a Gesture
To me it makes the utmost sense. Even within small cities like Hobart I could suggest that a picture of the OK hand gesture to an Australian is extremely offensive to those cultures which interpret index finger to thumbtip as an asshole. Colours also have different meaning culturally and not only words but common phrases can mean entirely something else depending on the context and audience.
Ethnocentrism and the Osterich Strategy
I think a part of the trouble here is indeed ethnocentrism. Another issue, especially in the hands of whack-em-up Mary or Bob the web developer who doesn’t want to grow or learn, is that clients don’t know and from the technical side there’s just something too hard about it. Don’t tell the client and remind ourselves that the site already works brilliantly as it is. Indeed there are some challenges but isn’t that why its worth going to work? Or am I just someone who operates on a different wavelength?
Have a Look at the Population
Next time you’re walking through your city on your way back from lunch have a look at the people you’re passing – here we have Africans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Europeans and any number of cultures. But that’s simplistic – we have South Africans, Sudanese, Indigenous Australians, Thai, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Maori, Tongan, Germans, French, Italians and Greeks (and about a hundred nationalities more).
One Eye on the Pajero
No we can’t develop the ultimate website that displays in all languages and with equal significance to all people. What we can do though is learn more about how people and cultures tick so we don’t launch the faux pas equivalent of the realease of the Pajero in Spain. We can also stop putting our thumb up at people and saying great when that gesture means something quite rude to other groups in the audience.
The Web is No Longer Anglo-American
Let’s look at this another way. Do you want their money? Are you marketing to the community or simply to a portion you feel safe living among? David Sifry’s State of the Blogosphere 2006 identified that in June of that year only 39% of Technorati tracked weblogs were in English, 31% were in Japanese and 12% were in Chinese. The web isn’t the American baby that it used to be.
Its really frustrating when you hear people say that everyone can read English or foreigners (insert tribe, nationality or culture into that term of namely not US) don’t use the web anyway. That reminds me of the ‘blind people don’t use the web’ load of bullshit that crops up every year or so. They do, they are and we have to learn to market towards the user.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:30 am
Good, long, post mate…I can tell this is something that’s got under your skin a bit (hasn’t it?!)
Being aware of all the possible users for a web site certainly extends to culture and ethnicity too – and not allowing for that (or the opposite: excluding it deliberately) in it’s design is a very poor approach, limiting effective marketing to the widest audience.
To date, I haven’t personally been involved with any projects that relied significantly on having a cultural awareness – usually making designs that sort of bypass that aspect altogether – but if the need arises, then I’m still aware of it. Good post mate.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:47 am
The issue is that a lot of people in the business will tell you that only ENGLISH matters, and only our version of english. They dismiss internationalisation, take gov’t for example, as irrelevant when multiculturalism is a dynamic in both our countries. How many english as a second language, or maybe not even as a language, do you have in Britain?
When we opt to choose to ignore the existence of a local large Sikh community (because they’re meant to be foreign not local in that paradigm) then there are a whole bunch of assumptions we can inadvertently make as a follow on. Like not using clear and simple language (re: WCAG), or putting up a promo picture that happens to offend a bunch of our audience without us ever getting the feedback.
So I’m just trying to bring awareness of this to people. I’m not saying we all necessarily need to jump in and internationalise today – a lot depends on your market I guess and budget and time. Gov’t and services would be a prime example of where this is applicable. It also pushes over into subcultures like the old, the people in your local council flats and different generational issues. The idea is to get to know who the user is and if your local gov’t finds that 20% of people have a predominant second language or culture then that needs to be addressed right from the beginning.
The osterich strategy that I hear in – we’re all just like me – kind of pisses me off sometimes I guess. One of my pet hates.
Its like general accessibility, a lot of it is about understanding there might be an issue for different groups and not putting barriers. So you don’t have to build directly for other cultures but you do have to consciously keep an eye that you don’t create cultural / accessiblity barriers.
Thanks for commenting Matt, I think its more the frustration I have in convincing people that we aren’t all whiteys anymore!